Brambles (2024)

American national club development in the 21st century has, in large part, continued the trend that began in the 1990s: identifying sites featuring sandy, free-draining soils, no matter how remote their location may be. With the exception of Friar’s Head on Long Island, many of the highest profile modern designs can be found in the country’s most far-flung destinations: Mullen, Nebraska; Bandon, Oregon; Holyoke, Colorado; Cobbtown, Georgia.

Brambles, a 2024 Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw design in Middletown, California, marks a different approach. It is a club whose sense of place takes precedence over its particular soil character. Approximately a two-hour drive from the rich golfing culture of San Francisco, Brambles is adjacent to Napa’s famous wine country. The course is spread across a meadow floor, dappled with specimen oak trees, and ringed by foothills extending to the Mayacamas range. Its inland setting possesses an ancient and unspoiled California beauty that conjures the opening of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, with “mountains full of sun and loveliness and a kind of invitation, so that you wanted to climb into their warm foothills almost as you want to climb into the lap of a beloved mother.”

Inviting foothills behind the 15th.

The origin of Brambles begins with James Duncan, a longtime associate of Coore and Crenshaw, whose expertise in club development was refined managing the firm’s builds at Austin Golf Club and Shanqin Bay, among others. In 2012, while living in San Francisco’s South Bay, Duncan took out a map, put a pin on the Golden Gate Bridge, and drew a circle (with that two hour driving radius) to visualize where he might begin searching for a suitable site to found a club.

Duncan envisioned a modern club that would embody the historic traditions from some of his favorite clubs in Scotland, like North Berwick and St Andrews. Clubs where matches are preferred to stroke play. Where walking is integrated into the sport. Where a convivial membership does not preclude occasional public play, and where the spirit of the game prioritizes conditions that allow for the golf ball to run, regardless of the playing surface’s visual aesthetic.

Duncan first began sharing his vision for Brambles with a few entrusted contacts as they strolled the fairways of the National Golf Links of America during the 2013 Walker Cup. A subsequent meeting was orchestrated among a select group of individuals at the San Francisco Golf Club later that year, with Coore in attendance to assure his and Crenshaw’s commitment to build a course that would personify the club’s ethos. Those who left that room still interested in the project comprise the club’s earliest founders.

The dearth of golf courses in Napa and Sonoma counties intrigued Duncan, given the region’s rustic beauty and bustling tourism, but he was wary that competing for resources with established wineries could pose a developmental challenge. Duncan extended his search further north of Napa, toeing into the southern end of Lake County, and in 2014 came upon the site that would eventually become Brambles.

The land was then owned by a man who was a shipbuilder and pilot, and Duncan soon befriended him over their mutual respect for handwrought craftsmanship. The owner listened to Duncan’s vision for how the property could lend itself well for a golf club, one that would provide employment for the community while retaining its pastoral character. The owner, perhaps to humor Duncan’s enthusiasm, even permitted Duncan to mow out some rudimentary fairways on the acreage to help illustrate how the land could become a special ground for golf.

Envisioning golf. Photo courtesy of James Duncan.

The fledgling club acquired the land in 2017, and Duncan spearheaded the developmental process as attention turned to creating the course. Part of the club’s pitch to the county was that they’d be environmental stewards of a tract of land that would remain accessible and preserved as open space. The club maintains a working herd of sheep, not only to graze the rough in a style that can make for an interesting unpredictability of lies, but to also integrate the course to the land’s pastured roots. Duncan was also mindful of the county’s unfortunate awareness of its own wildfire danger. The 2015 Valley Fire devastated the area, burning over 76,000 acres and destroying nearly 2,000 structures. The county planning commission gave Brambles unanimous approval on the basis that the club now serves as a vitally important irrigated firebreak to Middletown and its surrounding community.

One immediate hurdle affecting both the course’s desired architectural quality and the club’s aspirational land stewardship was managing the demanding soil. It was essential to select the appropriate turf that could withstand the region’s hot and arid summers, while providing links-like characteristics with as few water or chemical inputs as possible. Brambles’ soil is primarily a volcanic silt loam, with higher amounts of gravel and clay, which can become as hard as a brick in the summer and mud in the winters. Despite the short-term challenges that would result in a patient grow-in, Duncan believed that the heavier soil’s moisture retention would yield longer-term advantages of requiring significantly less irrigation while still achieving firm and fast conditions. The club selected two strains of zoysia for its playing surfaces and greens, a warm season species Duncan had familiarity with at Trinity Forest, Austin Golf Club, and the Coore & Crenshaw renovation of Yokohama Country Club’s West Course.

From the 2nd, looking out to the 11th and 10th green in the distance.

As these photos taken in October 2024 attest, the zoysia has established itself remarkably well. The golf ball bounds along the fairway’s contours, chartreuse in early dormancy, green suffused with yellow though still contrasting to the goldenrod of the hillsides. The greens are in great health, so firm that few if any ballmarks appear on their grainless surfaces.

The rawness of the hazards, mounding, and outlying rough in these photos should be understood as a snapshot of time in the course’s continuing evolution. These areas had been recently knocked back to prepare for seeding with native perennial and cool season grasses like fescue, in consultation with a local ecologist specializing in prairie management. Cultivating a native perimeter will be a thoughtful process over the course of a few winters. Once the transition zones from the zoysia to the native get established, there is little doubt that Brambles will meld with its surrounds as well as California’s other best-in-class inland examples like the North Course at The Los Angeles Country Club, the Valley Club of Montecito, and Rustic Canyon.

The uphill tenth.

As Coore promised during the club’s inaugural meeting at SFGC a decade ago, the golf course delivers an experience that evokes the simple yet refined charms of Scotland’s links. Brambles’ design is thoughtful and applied with a delicate hand, constructed with a measure of poise that never once overburdens the land’s humble character. The architecture elevates the land’s topographical features to create compelling golf on a routing that utilizes slopes stemming from the surrounding foothills, as well as a network of barrancas that cut through holes like veins on the first, second, fourth, ninth, eleventh, and seventeenth holes.

The short third.

Above ground mounding and berms make judicious appearances on holes situated on the meadow floor, injecting flair and strategic hazards to the more subdued corridors. Bunkers range from small excisions to Carnoustie sized walls. The set of greens has a stellar sense of variety. There is the trademark subtlety associated with much of Coore & Crenshaw’s portfolio, though not without occasional large slopes and contours that add spice to the complexes, like the steep tiered ridge of the one-shot third hole, or a wicked front hollow guarding the long 7th, or the gargantuan waves that can be found on the 16th, the course’s longest one-shotter.

If it’s curious why par is not mentioned for the above referenced holes, it’s because there is no stated par for the course. The scorecard only provides yardages for each hole’s three sets of tees, and a handicap number for players to fairly compete against one another according to their stroke indexes. Removing par does not at all feel like an omission or ruse in this instance, but rather a deliberate decision among many that the club has made in pursuit of honing the entire experience, on and off the course, to only what is most essential.

Holes to Note

First hole, 531 yards; the opening hole has an elevated teeing area just below the clubhouse. Its long fairway is set at an angle not unlike the 1st at Machrihanish, substituting coastline for what will become prairie rough, which the golfer will have to negotiate when choosing the optimal line of carry.

A shallow but severe barranca guards one of the more intricate greens on the course, shaped like a worn-in saddle with distinct ridges and hollows.

Fourth hole, 471 yards; a stately valley oak stands sentinel along the inside dogleg of this long two shot hole. Its trunk is rooted in the course’s deepest barranca that continues along the left side of the fairway through the green. The inclination to veer right is complicated by a well-placed centerline fairway bunker.

The player who splits the oak and the bunker is rewarded with a straight view to an uphill greensite nestled in an oak grove.

Fifth hole, 335 yards; a two-shot hole that can be driven is bound to be a favorite among members and guests, with a blind tee shot that crests over the property’s most rambunctious land. A cavernous bunker protects short left of the green, so the prudent play is to fly the ball further right on the hillside and allow the slopes to feed the ball towards the green.

Those who lay up can still face a testy pitch to a green benched on the hill; anything too aggressive without enough spin can tumble over the back. A superb hole, whose architecture presents risks and trade-offs for whichever decision is made off the tee.

Seventh hole, 611 yards; the longest hole on the course features its most beguiling contours on approach and around its green. An out of bounds fence runs the entire right-hand side. While there is ample width off the tee, the fairway constricts the closer to the green, demanding greater precision for every yard the golfer wants to advance towards the hole.

The hole’s right to left slope is punctuated by a series of gentle rolls, providing a measure of unpredictability for where the ball will come to rest in the lay up zone, and the kind of lie one will have for the next pitch. The green is characterized by a pronounced hollow at its front, left of which a small tongue of putting surface is surrounded by hazard area, providing pinnable space for only the most wicked of hole placements.

Ninth hole, 399 yards; a tactical delight. The hole resembles North Berwick’s infamous Pit 13th, exchanging an ancient stone stacked wall for a shallow yet steep barranca. The ditch guards the fairway along the left before becoming a crossing hazard flanking the right side of the green.

The player who best flirts with the hazard off the tee retains a shorter yardage and better angle to one of the more demanding approach shots in the routing. The green, the only one that Mr. Duncan helped personally shape, is an homage to St. Andrews’ Road Hole 17th, though its placement is set about 45 degrees differently than the original. The green is oriented from front to back instead of right to left, as if your approach shot in Fife was from the Jigger Inn’s front door, bringing the road bunker into play for any leftward miss, and the rugged barranca for the rightward.

Eleventh hole, 336 yards; a split fairway poses questions off the tee, as the hole location’s proximity to a thumbprint impression in the middle of a wide yet shallow green will determine the preferred pitching angle.

The eleventh hole from behind, looking back towards the teeing ground.

Sixteenth hole, 242 yards; the longest one-shot hole is a brute from both the back and middle (226 yards) tees. The brawny scale of its greensite and foreboding single bunker is reminiscent of Carnoustie’s Barry Burn 16th, and it’s easy to imagine matches coming to a conclusion on its immense putting surface. A steep fall off on the right collects balls that fail to run onto the putting surface with the right balance of momentum and line. The green’s wavy forms delineate a high back right tier and a lower left hollow.

Eighteenth hole, 510 yards; a stout, uphill finisher. A large hazard separates the right edge of the fairway with the first hole. The enlarged green encompasses the practice putting area along its backside, adding a wrinkle to assessing the depth perception of the flagstick’s placement from the fairway. Two deep bunkers and a short grass fall off await the right miss, from which the recovery is blind. But an unnerving excision of a bunker foregrounds the front left area of the green complex, concealing the prudent area to place a ball that cannot reach the green.

The 18th finishes steps from a low-slung clubhouse referred to as the Milking Parlor. Inside, a large communal table is the ranch’s centerpiece, set before a sliding door that opens to one of the longest views of the course. It is a landscape that remains faithful to its bucolic past, one that can be both vast yet intimate, emblematic of the enduring allure of the American West. Or, as Duncan still likes to call it, a pasture with some fairways mown out.

From the Fifth fairway, looking at the greens at Second (center) and Fourteenth. (right)

Brambles possesses an authentic, rustic simplicity that seems more challenging to achieve in today’s era of club development than perhaps ever before. For a young course that will continue to evolve, it is not one in search of an identity. Its self-assurance is impressed throughout every detail while on property, and that is testament to Mr. Duncan, the club’s founding team, and its staff, who are loyal not only to the best of our sport’s long-standing club traditions, but also to the California agrarian setting in which their club is set. It has an identity that values the importance of craft, and understands how kindred a greenkeeper is with a shipbuilder or a winemaker. That it takes passion, hard work, patience, and time for something born out of the ground to reach its full expression.